There was once a strange statement put forth to the effect that Faraday said electricity was life.[15] He himself denied it indignantly; but as most falsehoods are perversions of some truth, this one probably originated in his experiments on the Gymnotus. He felt an intense interest in those marine animals that give shocks, and sought "to identify the living power which they possess, with that which man can call into action from inert matter, and by him named electricity."[16] The most powerful of these is the Gymnotus, or electrical eel, and a live specimen of this creature, forty inches long, was secured by the Adelaide Gallery--a predecessor of the Polytechnic--in the summer of 1838. Four days after its arrival the poor creature lost an eye; for two months it could not be coaxed to eat either meat or fish, worms or frogs; but at last one day it killed and devoured four small fishes, and afterwards swallowed about a fish per diem. It was accustomed to swim round and round the tank, till a live fish was dropped in, when in some cases bending round its victim, it would discharge a shock that made the fish float on its back stunned and ready to be sucked into the jaws of its assailant. Faraday examined this eel and the water around it, both with his hands and with special collectors of electricity, and satisfied himself not merely of the shock, which was easy enough, but of its power to deflect a galvanometer, to make a magnet, to effect chemical decomposition, and to give a spark. His account of the experiments terminates with some speculations on the connection of this animal electricity with nervous power; but there the matter rested. His own views were thus expressed to his friend Dumas:--"As living creatures produce heat, and a heat certainly identical with that of our hearths, why should they not produce electricity also, and an electricity in like manner identical with that of our machines? But if the heat produced during life, and necessary to life, is not life after all, why should electricity itself be life? Like heat, like chemical action, electricity is an implement of life, and nothing more."